Mother and son reunite after 51 years apart

Tucson, Arizona — It was a very special and emotional Thanksgiving for a mother and son who reunited after 51 years.

The mother gave her son up for adoption back in the 1960’s when he was born.

Years passed and the mother and son both say they always felt a part of them missing.

“A little nervous but very very excited,” said Dave Froerer, who has not met his mother since he was born.

**EMBARGO: Tucson, AZ**It was a very special and emotional Thanksgiving for a mother and son who reunited after 51 years. Marilyn Parker gave her son, Dave Froerer, up for adoption back in the 1960’s when he was born.

“We have been living separate lives,” said Marilyn Parker, Froerer’s biological mother.

Little did he know, Parker gave him up for adoption when she was 16-years-old.

She says she didn’t plan on getting pregnant with her high school boyfriend and was horrified, humiliated and ashamed. She didn’t want to bring a baby into a life that was not prepared to take care of him.

She says when she gave birth, doctors wouldn’t tell her the baby’s gender or let her hold him.

Parker says years went by and she thought about him every day.

“I had almost given up,” she said. “I just thought you know what every year on his birthday it was such a special day in my heart and I just always wondered.”

Dave says he wondered the same thing. So much that just this past year he took a DNA test and from a list of matches found a second cousin that would link him up to his mom.

“So I open my email September 19 and it said ‘It think I am your birth mother?'” she said.

“My cousin said I looked him up as she is telling this. I looked him up on Facebook so she gives me the name and I’m looking through Facebook and just the month prior there are all these birthday… happy birthday Dave, happy birthday and it is all on his birthday. I am like ‘Oh my god that is the day, that is the day. Oh this is it,'” she said.

After that, they talked on the phone every day and decided to meet for the first time to spend Thanksgiving in Tucson together.